Social Networking Watch: News on the Social Networking and Social Media Industry

AOL, Yahoo, And Microsoft Band Together To Fend Off Facebook’s Ad Assault

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 9 - There have been a number of rumors circulating around Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL, most of them focusing on a potential AOL/Yahoo merger, or Yahoo’s acquisition by AOL or Microsoft, etc. Well, it seems the companies have officially become linked, by way of display ads. The agreements will allow each to offer the other’s display ads to their respective customers. This strategic partnership creates somewhat of a mega ad network. It’s also a play to fend off the meteoric rise of Facebook (and, in turn, Google, which owns a 75% share of search advertising).

by Rip Empson
See full article at Tech Crunch

See all posts on AOL
See all posts on Yahoo
See all posts on Facebook

AOL Building a Location-Centric Social Network Around MapQuest

DIGITAL TRENDS - Oct 4 - AOL is hoping to enter the social networking market by leveraging its struggling MapQuest platform. The new site is named mqVibe and pairs social networking with geo-social activity. The new service is targeting the Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla social space. It remains to be seen if this new platform can get a foothold in the market.

by Molly McHugh
See full article at Digital Trends

See all posts on AOL

Is AOL About to Announce Its Own Social Network?

READ WRITE WEB - Sep 14 - Judging by trademark applications and domain name registrations, it appears that AOL is preparing to announce a social network called NVIBE. AOL registered NVIBE.com on September 9, and they applied on the same day for five trademarks that describe interest- and location-based social networking services.

by Jon Mitchell
See full article at Read Write Web

See all posts on AOL

AOL Eyes Merger With Yahoo

MASHABLE - Sep 11 - AOL and Yahoo are once again discussing combining the two Internet companies. This development follows the firing of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz earlier this week. While no deal has come to fruition, both companies have continued to face their share of struggles and seen their valuations shrink.

by Adam Ostrow
See full article at Mashable

See all posts on AOL
See all posts on Yahoo

AOL Cuts 900 Jobs Worldwide

ASSOCIATED PRESS - Mar 11 - AOL will slash 900 jobs worldwide, or ~20% of its work force, partly to eliminate overlap that stems from its recent purchase of The Huffington Post. Over the past several years, AOL has struggled to reinvent itself as a company focused on advertising and content, operating a variety of websites such as the popular tech blog Engadget. Since CEO Tim Armstrong was lured from Google to take the helm of AOL in April '09, AOL has focused increasingly on the market for local content, helped by the purchase and expansion of its network of Patch local news sites.

by Rachel Metz and Barbara Ortutay
See full article at Salon

See all posts on AOL

AOL Buys Huffington Post For $315M

CNET NEWS - Feb 6 - AOL has agreed to pay $315M for the Huffington Post and form a new media powerhouse by combining the content of both organizations. The resulting new outfit will be called Huffington Post Media Group and feature all the content from previous AOL acquisitions including Engadget and TechCrunch. By doing so, AOL seems intent on convincing the world that it is deadly serious about reclaiming its place among the leaders of the digital media world. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS

See all posts on AOL

AOL Europe Acquires Goviral For $96.7M

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 31 – AOL Europe has completed an acquisition of video distribution network Goviral today for a total of $96.7 million. The initial purchase is for $74.1 million and $22.6 million in a two year earn out. Video is critical to AOL Europe, so Goviral's network of 18,000 publishers across 24 vertical markets claims to reach 350 million users and generate more than 60 million video views monthly. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on AOL

AOL Acquires About.Me

TECH CRUNCH - Dec 21 - Personal profile startup About.me launched publicly four days ago. Today AOL, will announce that they’ve acquired the company. It will become part of the consumer applications group, led by AOL exec Brad Garlinghouse. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on About.me
See all posts on AOL

AOL Attempting To Buy Yahoo

MASHABLE - Oct 14 - AOL and several venture capital firms such as Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group are in talks to buy Yahoo. Currently, AOL’s market value is around one tenth of Yahoo’s. Neither company is willing to make an official statement at this time. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

See all posts on AOL
See all posts on Yahoo

Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here

TECH CRUNCH - Sep 29 - In May I had a chance to interview Tim on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. After the talk we went to the speaker room for a quick private chat. Tim asked me how things were going at TechCrunch. I told him I was exhausted after five years but that a recent move to Seattle made it easier to balance my life. I joked that I was half retired. “That’s too bad, he said, we’d love to acquire you but we’d need to know you would stick around.” Sometime in late July conversations started again. And most of the conversations were about our commitment to keep doing what we do. The truth is I was tired. But I wasn’t tired of writing, or speaking at events. I was tired of our endless tech problems. AOL of course fixes that problem perfectly. AOL was very aggressive about one last important issue that really sealed the deal – editorial. Tim told me that he doesn’t want whatever makes TechCrunch special to go away. He also said it was important that we feel free to criticize AOL when we think they deserve it. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH   

See all posts on AOL

AOL Acquires TechCrunch

MASHABLE - Sep 29 - AOL is acquiring popular technology news publication TechCrunch and its associated properties. The acquisition was formally announced at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, where AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and TechCrunch Founder and Co-editor Michael Arrington took the stage to announce and sign the agreement. Armstrong and Arrington did not disclose terms, though CNBC’s Julia Boorstin reports that the price is “~$40 million.” Arrington, who founded the site in 2005 and still breaks many of its biggest stories, will remain a part of TechCrunch for at least three years as part of the deal. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

See all posts on AOL

AOL Acquires Thing Labs And Brizzly

MASHABLE - Sep 28 - Back in the summer of 2009, Shellen and fellow Googler Chris Wetherell, who were instrumental in creating Google Reader, founded Thing Labs, a social app shop. Their freshman product was Brizzly, a web-based social reader and third-party Twitter and Facebook client. Brizzly was never in a position to compete with hard-hitting apps such as Seesmic and Tweetdeck, but this fact alone would have made Thing Labs a more palatable acquisition target for AOL. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE

See all posts on AOL

AOL Buys Mobile Social Service Rally Up

AP - Sep 1 - AOL has purchased location-based social networking service Rally Up for an undisclosed sum. Rally Up started in 2009. It offers a social networking app by the same name for iPhone and iPad, and has submitted another application to Apple's App Store called FacePlant that is meant to let iPhone users see friends and start a video chat over the iPhone's FaceTime app. FULL ARTICLE @ AP

See all posts on AOL

AOL Wants To Help Parents Protect Children Online With Safe Social

TECH CRUNCH - Aug 23 - AOL is launching an new pre-teen/teen online safety app called SafeSocial. AOL is licensing technology from Social Shield, a startup that offers a web app that targets various security risks on social networks. Safe Social will allow parents to monitor their kids social network conversations and actual “friends” network by sending parents real-time alerts if inappropriate conversations are happening (such as mentions of sex, drugs, suicide, and other red flag terms). FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on AOL

Criterion Capital Partners Acquires Bebo From AOL

TECH CRUNCH - June 17 - The rumors are true: hedge fund Criterion Capital Partners is indeed the buyer of Bebo. AOL is offloading Bebo for less than $10M (other media are reporting a purchase price of around $2.5 million). Criterion Capital Partners will take over Bebo’s global operations immediately and retain its San Francisco-based headquarters. Exact terms of the deal are not being disclosed by either party, but AOL CEO Tim Armstrong sent a note to all employees this morning that suggests our earlier reports that the ability to offset almost the whole sum it paid for Bebo as a tax loss played a big role are correct. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on AOL
See all posts on Bebo

AOL To Sell Bebo For $10 Million

TECH CRUNCH - June 16 - AOL is close to selling Bebo to an investor group. The price? $10M or less. Rumors of the acquisition first surfaced this morning, and the buyer may be Criterion Capital Partners. That’s just a bit less than the $850M AOL paid for the social network in 2008. And as decimated as Bebo is, it’s almost certainly worth more than $10M. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on AOL
See all posts on Bebo

Facebook On AIM Is A Hit: 1 Million Users

TECH CRUNCH - Apr 26 - In Feb AOL added the ability to message Facebook friends on AIM, giving Facebook users a nice stand alone client to chat with their Facebook friends. Since then, more than 1M people have used Facebook Connect on AIM to access that Facebook friends list and all of these were new installs of the AIM client. That’s about 5% of the total 21M monthly AIM users, according to Comscore. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on Facebook
See all posts on AOL

AOL Launches Lifestream As New Standalone Product

TECH CRUNCH - Mar 11 - Aol launched Lifestream, a social aggregator and publisher, as part of their AIM platform at TechCrunch50 Last Fall. Since then it has gained ~2M users. Based on that success Aol is now launching Lifestream as a standalone product at lifestream.aol.com. Like Friendfeed, Lifestream aggregates a number of third party social networks – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, etc., so if you follow a Lifestream user you’ll see all of the content that user publishes on those networks. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on AOL